"To show himself with his brother André," put in another. "He's a good-looking fellow is André Lumineau! I should not mind——"
Victoire Guerineau and the others broke into a peal of laughter.
"You are quite out of it. It's for Félicité Gauvrit he came!"
"Oh, oh!" exclaimed those in front.
"How ill-natured you are! If she were to hear you."
And several turned towards the Michelonnes' doorstep, near to which, amid a little throng, stood Mathurin's former fiancée.
Suddenly a murmur ran through the crowd.
"There he is. Poor fellow! How difficult it is for him to walk."
And under the pointed arch of a low doorway, one half of which only was open, a deformed figure was seen struggling to force a passage through the narrow aperture, one hand holding a crutch clutched hold of a pillar outside, by which the poor man strove to drag himself through, but he had only succeeded in freeing one shoulder. With head thrown back, there was an expression of agony upon the face which attested the violence of the effort, and the strength of will that would not give in. Mathurin Lumineau seemed on the point of suffocation; he looked at no one in the throng of people whose gaze was riveted upon him; his eyes on a higher level than those of the spectators were fixed upon the blue vault of heaven with an expression of anguish that re-acted upon them.
Conversation was interrupted; voices began to murmur: